MRIS Data Services provide real estate information in an easy to use manner. The specification is implemented as RESTful web services. The data is encapsulated in the form of Resources that contain the consolidated information about a given real estate entity that a user might be interested in. The web services are themselves accessible over HTTP, and all it takes is an HTTP client to make the calls and get the data.

Prior to the RESTful services, the data was only accessible through a RETS (Real Estate Transaction Standard) interface. That interface provides a standard, defined by the Nationals Association of REALTORS® (NAR), to exchange data in a uniform manner among the various Multiple Listing Agencies (MLS) and other customers.

The RESTful web services provide an open set of APIs any web developer can use without having to understand the complexities of the real estate data or real estate standards. This also helps developers that are not in the real estate industry.

What is REST?

Representational State Transfer (REST) is a style of software architecture for distributed hypermedia systems. As such, it is not only a method of building what are sometimes called ‘web services.’ REST strictly refers to a collection of architecture principles that outline how resources are defined and addressed. Systems that follow REST design principles are often referred to as ‘RESTful.’

The term Representational State Transfer was introduced and defined in 2000 by Roy Fielding in his doctoral dissertation. (Fielding, 2000) Fielding is one of the principal authors of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) specification versions 1.0 and 1.1.